


screaming long live

by avid_reader1



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Consensual Infidelity, F/M, Infidelity, M/M, Post-2015 Stanley Cup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:53:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4161144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avid_reader1/pseuds/avid_reader1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is a death sentence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	screaming long live

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. GUYS I CAN TYPE POST-2015 STANLEY CUP WIN. THIS IS AMAZING. 
> 
> What is not amazing, however, is this fanfic. I am sorry, I really am, I mean who needs angst after that baller game on Monday? But I had to, I was actually unable the resist. After hearing the rumours of Jon/Lindsey engagement, I curled up into a ball, died, and ficced the pain. 
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift's Long Live, my kanetoews song. The lyric is supposed to be ironic, but now it just feels bitter. Oops. 
> 
> So, yeah guys, I'm warning you. No happy endings for this one.

It wasn't like it was NHL's Best Kept Secret or whatever. 

Kane and Toews were a nebulous not-thing, and it was something everybody sort of just fundamentally knew and never acknowledged in polite company. Just like Sidney Crosby and Jack Johnson's shitshow, just like John Tavares and Sam Gagner were married in all the ways two people could be in a largely homophobic organization, just like Tyler Seguin fucked/is fucking/is on the way to fucking most of the Bruins and half of the Stars, and nobody said anything. Ever. 

So Pat kissed Jonny and pressed him down into the mattress and fucked him until they both got the uncontrollable itch out of their skin. The itch that maybe came from being the fucking renaissance of a dead hockey city, or two kids barely in their twenties thrown together without much of a choice. Or maybe having to shoulder an entire organization and not fucking anything up. The itch that, was it not solved by sex, could turn into the shitshow of '12. 

They weren't in love, except that was one of the things nobody acknowledged either. Except that they were, in their own, dumb, hockey-player ways. 

It wasn't a relationship. Nobody in their right, socially-accepted minds would consider what they had a relationship. But hockey players were practically required to stop developing in an emotional capacity at 11, so they didn't say they were together, but they didn't not either. 

It wasn't like Jon and Pat were exclusive. Pat had had Amanda for longer than the media knew, but he was stupidly, naïvely hopeful when he was still a rookie. He'd believed that-but no. And Jonny is great friends with Lindsey, and he liked her a lot, and she was awesome to be around. She insulted his beer choices and his food choices and his life choices, and in turn she allowed him to kiss her in public, like she was the most important thing he'd ever held.

(That's not a lie, but what is is saying it's the truth.)

So, maybe they were less Best Kept Secret; more Dirty Secret No One Wanted to Touch. 

And it worked for them. Lindsey held Jonny's hand in pictures and he looked at her with fondness he didn't have to fake. Amanda drowned in Patrick's arms, and she looked good where she was, in pictures with the Kanes, everybody smiling wide. 

But, during the season, when the scrape of ice against razor-sharp skates and flying sticks is all they can care about, Pat and Jonny knock on each others' doors with hands stuffed deep in their pockets. And they kiss and fuck and pretend they're the only ones in the world. Patrick, Jonny and hockey. 

It was bound to end, one way or another. Happiness is deadly because it never stays. And hope is deadliest because, sometimes, there's just nothing anybody could do. 

"I asked her to marry me," Jonny says abruptly, still naked on Pat's bed, but no longer touching him. 

Patrick doesn't freeze, but it takes everything he has to do so. 

"She said yes." Jon's voice is softer, gentler, like he can hear Pat's heart being blown to smithereens with every word he says. "The wedding will be this summer. July. In Winnipeg."

Patrick-Patrick doesn't know what to feel, what to say. He doesn't fake a grin and congratulate him, because he's never had to fake it in Jonny's face. So he takes a deep breath, let the anger consume him, and quietly says, "Fuck you, Jon."

Jonny doesn't flinch, but Patrick knows it's a close thing. He sighs, tiredly, too exhausted at 28 with a great career and a smoking hot fiancée. "What did you expect from this, Patrick."

It's not a question, but Pat answers anyway. "Shut the fuck up Jonny. We had an agreement, I know that, you know that. But it's not bros to spring on me after I just fucked your brains out. 

"It's not bros? What the hell, Kaner, grow up."

Kaner. Huh. Pat didn't think that name could ever hurt, but it sounds too much like a slammed door on this-whatever this is. And now Pat just feels tired, right down to his bones. Too tired to deal with this, with anything, but especially his and Jonny's fucked-up lives. 

So he gives up, gives in, looks at Jonny with unfairly pleading eyes. "Just let me have tonight. Jon. Just tonight."

Jonny looks back at him. (His murder eyes don't exist in the bedroom. They're always so expressive, going soft when Patrick ran his hands through his hair, hard and dark when Patrick curled his hands the perfect way. Those eyes were for Patrick alone, and now no one will ever get to see them again.) He pulls Pat to his chest, a place by his breastbone cradling Pat's head like it was a place carved for him, or a place Pat carved himself. 

"I wish-"

"I know."

"I'm in love with you." Because it had to be said once. And Patrick's always been the braver one, out of the two of them. That will never change. 

The "I love you" is too tainted to be just love, to be pure emotion. Instead of three words it sounds like "I wish things were different", or "I wish we were different" or maybe, slightly, "I hate you."

Jonny sighs for what feels like the hundredth time that night and Pat feels it down to his toes. He says, "I love you too," like he understands what it actually means. 

Love is a death sentence for them. Pat knows that, and he touches the place a ring would go on Jonny's finger, and Jonny buries his hands in his hair exactly where Amanda touched him just a few hours before.

**Author's Note:**

> I am trash. Let me jump off a bridge now.


End file.
